With Love & Trust & Friends & Hammers...

  Every summer needs it's soundtrack. An album newly discovered just around the time the weather is getting nice & the days start getting longer. It's an annual ritual for me & it tends to serve as a time capsule, wherein everytime I listen to a previous summers soundtrack the moments & moods are encapsulated beautifully.
For as long as I've lived in Seattle the go to band for summer soundtracks has been the Hold Steady.
Though they have been together since 2003 or so, I didn't discover them until 2007. I was reading a review of something or other in the Stranger & they made reference to Hold Steady's Craig Finn's songwritng style as a mix between Bruce Springsteen & Blake Schwarzenbach(Oh... Both B.S.'rs) I found a copy of Almost Killed Me at the library. It was the end of the summer & I had only lived here a few months, I didn't know too many people, I loved album long story driven narratives. They helped me envision being with actual people when in my real life I was cut off & lonely 99% of the time. I was also drinking heavily every single evening. Mostly by myself. Hold Steady's stories about Holly, Charlemagne, & Gideon were compelling, I knew these folks, I knew the midwestern cities from whence they came & I understood their midwestern dreams. They had been disillusioned & lived in the scene too long, and so had I.
Almost Killed Me said everything I had always wanted to say into a microphone, but lacked a credible band to do so. I immediately stopped writing. I started drinking more.
By the start of the next summer I had graduated to Boys & Girls in America
Heather, my girlfriend at the time had it sitting on her cd rack. Now if it's not enough that I am stuck in my own head most of the time & am mostly self centered, I also usually hate other peoples music collections. Especially girlfriends music collections (until after the relationship, when I can listen in from outside of the situation with new ears, then this becomes it's own time capsule to me, & I can see the brilliance in her taste. I never said that I wasn't an asshole) I was drunk & sitting smoking by a window in her apartment, I was talking about Springsteen & going off on some tangent. I remember Heather calmly telling me that she had this mythical cd I had heard tell of.  She put it on... I hated it.
Boys & Girls in America  sounded to me initially like an inside joke that I wasn't in on. It was that damned song Chips Ahoy that seemed to negate the brilliance of songs like You can make him like you. For every Citrus  there was a Southtown Girls that didn't blow me or the boys from Minneapolis/St. Paul away.
Days passed in a humid haze of hangover sweats and hunger pangs. The summer Seattle sun became the hot soft light, & the same kooks that can't cum but sure can kiss were the people I surrounded myself with. The album I initially couldn't stand was a blank canvas that I filled in with effluvia from my own life. Once I had made it mine, I began to love it. To see it's clever quirks & it's Thin Lizzy soul. Stuck Between Stations is the first song on the album, it's brilliance is immediate to the initiated. A song about the death of  the poet John Berryman that starts with a quote from Kerouac's Sal Paradise. This was Lit-Nerd Rock, & Rock-Nerd Rock all rolled into one. It took up alot of time playing spot the references & then you sit back feeling smart & clever & pleased with yourself. I did alot of this to poor Heather, who was patient & feigned interest just enough to let me continue. It passed the time to the next summer & Stay Positive.

To understand the impact of Stay Positive on me, it's important to understand the context of my life at the time. Summer 2008. It seems like a lifetime ago. I was clean, I no longer used drugs it's true, but that's a damned far sight from having your shit together. I didn't know this at the time, and before I come in saying the very first song on the previously mentioned album changed my life... I will attempt to give you some perspective. I needed a change in my life, I needed purpose. I was off of drugs but all I did was work & drink & this lifestyle was quickly losing it's luster for me. I no longer wrote because I was afraid of the implications, I was afraid I couldn't do it without drugs & if I couldn't... What was I? Besides, the Hold Steady already said everything I had wanted to say. Heather was still with me, but I was always distant & moody. I wanted a change & I didn't know how to go about it, she didn't have any ideas either. I spoke of some far off film school I might attend, or some possible military career. Anything but cooking all night every night, waking up hungover. Stuck in this cycle. Paying the rent forever & over again, it was enough to make terminal heroin addiction seem like a viable option.  I've always needed my girlfriends to be part mother, part nurse, half nun, half whore... It might be a very Victorian construct, but fuck it, it's true. I didn't know how to ask Heather to be this, I might not have been wholly conscious of the need myself. But I felt shiftless & wasted. I had lofty thoughts & ideas, with no clear way of making them happen. Everyday I felt my age or older & I knew I couldn't last. Enter Constructive Summer at the beginning of summer 2008. While starting the band & the novel & going back to school was still a year away for me this song was the seed that was left to germinate in my head. Part of the catalyst for the change I desired. The idea that every summer, every year you can start your life fresh ,all you need is a few hammers & some friends who love you, then you can sit by the skyline with your friends looking down at your creation & laugh while you all share a bottle of wine.  While it's true that I am a sappy & sentimental man, this message in this song literally makes my eyes water with unfettered joy. Those of you who know me, know that this is rare.

It is an anthem to change, and exactly what I needed at the time. For me the inherent possibilities of actions, any actions gave me the will to take charge of my own life & where it was heading. A year later when starting work on what would be the French Letters, it was this song that was always on my mind. The chorus chanting in my head as we took the bus down to the Rainier Brewery to record. A few weeks ago I remarked on the way to the studio that I had often wondered if the band would be together by the summer. The remark got an odd reaction by the rest of the band, & I did a poor job of explaining what I meant. I had meant the feeling of accomplishment & satisfaction the characters in Constructive Summer were talking about in the song.
The Stay Positive album became my St. Christopher's Cross for the duration of that summer. Although I didn't have anything in motion yet, I knew I was going to do "something" & whether that was a shooting spree or a film, it didn't matter. I cheered up a little bit. I had the beginings of a purpose again.






I understand what I'm saying.  It's akin to some British musicians in 1967 listening to the Rolling Stones & saying "Damn man, that's what I wanted to do... Might as well give up. American blues riffs cannot possibly be stretched any further!"   I am pessimistic & I am also a fatalist. What someone else even hears in this song is still up to interpretation. I only know what it did for me. It gave me hope at a time when I was grasping for mere threads of it.
This was supposed to actually be a review somewhat of the Hold Steady's new album Heaven is Whenever. I didn't make it that far.  I need to stay on point, stick with the narrative. It's the poet in me that likes meandering off of the thesis. It's been a heady day.
Hell, it's been a heady week. I need to climb out of my own mind for a moment. Talk to people, kiss a girl, breathe fresh air. I might get around to actually talking about Heaven is Whenever & how I don't like it, yet. There's a song about a waitress I enjoy, waitress loving is the kind of loving I understand.
There is a new Hold Steady album, & a brand new summer getting ready to at least hold tight. The truth is I am lonely. I probably always have been. That's why I look to records to define seasons for me, or books to defend me.
Wow. that's a fun note to end this on.